"What's that down there?"
Roy pointed downward from the aeroplane to a small black object crawling painfully over the glistening white billows of alkali far below them.
The lad, his sister and Jess were on their way back from the arroyo in which the battle with the coyotes had occurred. Mr. Bell and Jimsy had been left behind, for the former was anxious to "prospect" his mine as thoroughly as possible in order to ascertain if it gave indications of living up to its first rich promise. A brief inspection of the cave had thoroughly disgusted Peggy and Jess.
"Is this a rich gold mine!" Jess had cried, indignantly regarding the dull walls on which the torches had glowed unflatteringly; "it looks more like the interior of the cellar at home."
"All is not gold that glitters," Mr. Bell had responded with a smile. At the same moment he had flaked off a chunk of dark colored metal with his knife.
"There, Miss Jess," he exclaimed, handing it to the girl, "that is almost pure gold, and I am in hopes that there is lots more where that came from."
And they had been kind enough not to laugh too immoderately atJess's discomfiture.
A short time later, having located a water hole and partaken of a good lunch, Roy and his companions had re-embarked and started back to camp with the joyful tidings that the missing adventurers had been found. They had been under way but a short time when Roy's attention had been attracted by the moving dot which had caused him to utter the exclamation recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
Against the flat, baking, quivering expanse of alkali the crawling splotch of black showed up as plainly as a blot of ink on a sheet of clean white blotting paper. Peering over the edge of the chassis they all scrutinized it closely.
"It's—it's a man!" cried Jess at length.
"So it is!" declared Peggy, "and on foot. What can he be doing out in this desert country without a horse?"
"He's in trouble anyhow," declared Roy, excitedly. "See, he's staggering along so painfully that it looks as if he couldn't go a step further. I'm going to drop and find out what the trouble is."
As he spoke the boy threw in the descending clutch, and the big monoplane began to drop as swiftly as a buzzard that has espied some prey far beneath him.
As they rushed downward the whirr of their descent seemed to arouse the being so painfully crawling over the hot waste beneath them. He looked up, and then, extending his hands upward in a gesture of bewilderment, he staggered forward and the next instant stretched his length on the alkali, falling face downward.
"Oh, he is dead!" shrilled Jess, clasping her hands.
"I don't think so," was Roy's grave reply, "but we must get to him as quickly as we can."
There was no need to tell Peggy to get the water canteen ready. Her busy little, fingers were fumbling with it. As they touched the ground she leaped nimbly from the chassis and sped over the burning desert floor to the side of the recumbent wayfarer. A second later Roy and Jess joined her. Very tenderly they turned the insensible man upon his back and dashed the water upon his face.
He was a short, rather stockily built man of middle age, and obviously, from his mahogany colored skin and lank black hair, a Mexican. He was dressed in a tattered shirt with a serape thrown about the neck to keep off the blazing rays of the sun. His feet were encased in a kind of moccasins over which spurs were strapped. Evidently, then, he had been mounted at some time—presumably recently, but where was his horse? How did he come to be wandering under the maddening heat of the sun over the vast alkali waste. But these were questions the answers to which had to be deferred for the present, for it began to appear doubtful if they had arrived in time to fan the wanderer's vital spark back into flame.
But at length their ministrations met with their reward. The man's eyelids flickered and a deep sigh escaped his lips. Before long they could press the water canteen to his mouth. He seized it with avidity and would have drained it.
"Only a little," cried Peggy; "I read once how a man, dying of thirst, was killed outright when he was given too much water to drink."
So Roy wrenched the canteen from the prostrated man's feeble grasp before he had drained more than a mouthful or two. But even that had revived him, and he was able to sit up and gaze about bewilderedly. All at once his eyes rested on Peggy, and he seemed to regard her as the means of his salvation from a terrible death on the alkali. Kneeling down he cried out in a pitifully cracked voice:
"You missie angel from heaven. Me Alverado your servant always. No go away ever!"
"By ginger, Peggy, you've made a conquest!" cried Roy, half hysterically.
Now that the strain of the struggle between life and death was over Peggy flushed and looked embarrassed. She was not used to the exaggerated character of the Mexican. But if she feared another outburst it did not come. Far too much exhausted to say more, Alverado—as he called himself—sank back once more on the alkali.
"Quick! Carry him to the aeroplane and get him into camp," cried Roy, raising the half-conscious Mexican's head. "You girls take his feet and we'll put him in the bottom of the chassis on those cushions."
Consequently, when the aeroplane once more took the air it was to fly lower than usual under its additional burden, but in the hearts of all three of its American occupants there rang the joy of having saved a human life from the unsparing alkali.
"Aunt Sally! Aunt Sally! Everything's all right and we've got a patient for you," was Peggy's rather uncomplimentary greeting as the aeroplane alighted and came spinning across the dusty expanse toward the willow clump.
Miss Prescott threw up her hands and old Mr. Peter Bell hastened from amidst his beloved horses.
"Everything's all right but you've got a patient!" cried the New England lady, who looked very prim and unwesternlike in a gingham gown and sun bonnet to match.
"No time for explanations now," cried Roy. "Come on, Mr. Bell, and help us get our sick man out and then we'll tell you all about how we found Jimsy and Mr. Bell at the mine."
With Mr. Bell's assistance it did not take long to transfer Alverado from the aeroplane to a cot, and Miss Prescott, who, as Roy said, would "rather nurse than eat," ministered to him to such good effect that by nightfall he was able to sit up and tell his story. In the meantime the excited youngsters had related their narratives, which Miss Prescott interrupted in a dozen places by: "Land's sakes!" "Good gracious me!"
"Oh, what a dreadful country!" and much more to the same effect.
All the time he was relating his story Alverado kept his eyes fixed on Peggy's face, with much the same expression as that worn by a faithful spaniel. At first this fixed gaze annoyed the young girl not a little, but soon she realized that it was entirely respectful and meant as a tribute, for the Mexican evidently regarded her as his rescuer in chief.
Alverado's story proved vague and sketchy, but he could not be induced to enlarge upon it. In brief his tale was that some years before, when crossing the desert on his way from a mine he owned, he had been attacked by a band of highwaymen. They had wrecked his wagon and murdered his family, who were traveling with him. They had attacked him because of their impression that he was carrying much gold with him, whereas, in reality, he had secured nothing but a living from his desert mine. In their rage at being thwarted, the miscreants had wiped out the Mexican's family and left him for dead with a wound in his skull.
But a wandering band of Nevada Indians had happened along while the Mexican still lay unconscious and, reviving him, carried him with them over the border into California. He had parted from them soon after and drifted down into Mexico. In time he accumulated a small fortune, but the thought of the wrong he had suffered never left his heart. At last his affairs reached a stage where he felt justified in returning to Nevada to try to find some trace of his wrongers, and demand justice. He had set out well equipped, but, a few days before the young aviators encountered him, his water burro had stumbled and fallen, and in the fall had broken the water kegs it carried. From that time on his trip across the alkali had been a nightmare. First his pony had died, and then his two remaining pack burros. He had obtained a scanty supply of thirst quenching stuff from the pulpy insides of cactus and maguey leaves, but when the aviators had discovered him he had been in the last stages of death from thirst and exhaustion—the death that so many men on the alkali have met alone and bravely.
"Do you know the name of the men who attacked you and treated you so cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the conclusion of the Mexican's dramatic narrative.
A dark look crossed the man's swarthy features.
"One name onlee I know, mees," he said, with a snarl which somehow reminded Peggy of the coyotes of the arroyo.
"And his name was?"
"Red Beel Soomers!"
"'Red Bill Summers!" they all echoed, except Miss Prescott and oldMr. Peter Bell, the latter of whom had fallen into a reverie.
As if they had been emblazoned in electric lights, the words ofProfessor Wandering William flashed across Peggy's brain.
"The most desperate ruffian on the Nevada desert."
And at the same time, with one of those quick, flashes of intuition which growing girls share with grown women, Peggy sensed a vague connection between that sinister conversation she had overheard on her wakeful night at the National House and the dreaded Red Bill.
Bright and early the next day the aeroplane whizzed back to the arroyo, carrying a fresh supply of food and water, for Mr. Bell had decided to investigate his "prospect" thoroughly while he had an opportunity. To his mind, he had declared, the lead, or pay streak, ran back far into the base of the barren hills, and might yield almost untold of riches if worked properly. Among the supplies carried by the aeroplane, therefore, was a stock of dynamite from the red painted box.
In the meantime Alverado had to be accepted perforce as a member of the party. In the first place, he showed no disposition to leave, and in the second, even had he done so, there was no horse or burro that could be spared for him to ride. When Mr. Bell heard of the new addition to the camp he was at first not best pleased. Every additional mouth meant an extra strain on their supplies, but he surrendered to the inevitable, and finally remarked:
"Oh, well, I guess he'll be useful enough about the place. Anyhow, if we need him we can put him to work in the mine."
Peggy and Jess had accompanied Roy over in the aeroplane to the mine, but Mr. Bell insisted on their returning. "This is not work for women or girls," he said, much to Peggy's inward disgust.
Jess, with her daintier ideas, however, was nothing averse to the thought of getting back to the creature comforts of the permanent camp in the willows.
"But who's going to get you back, I'd like to know," exclaimed Mr. Bell, shoving back his sombrero and scratching his head perplexedly; "it's important, for reasons you know of, that I should prospect this claim so that I can record it to the limit, and to do that I'll need Roy. Maybe after all, you'd better stay."
Peggy's eyes danced delightedly, but Jess spoiled it all by saying:
Why, Peggy can run the aeroplane better than either Roy or Jimsy,Mr. Bell."
"O-h-h! Jess!" shouted Roy derisively.
"Well, she can, and you know it, too," declared Jess loyally.
"Why that's so, isn't it?" cried Mr. Bell, glad of this way out of his difficulty. After that there was nothing for Peggy to do but to give in gracefully.
The two girls were ready to start back when Mr. Bell reached into his pocket and drew forth a bit of carefully folded paper.
"I'll entrust this to you," he said to Peggy; "it's for my brother. It's a correct description of the mine's location so far as we have explored it. The plan is a duplicate one, and I'll feel safer if I know that, beside the original, my brother has a copy. In the event of one being lost a lot of work would be saved."
Soon after this, adieus were said, and the aeroplane soared high into the clear, burning air above the desolate ridges. Under Peggy's skillful hands the plane fairly flew. At the pace they proceeded it was not long before the willows, a dark clump amid the surrounding ocean of glittering waste, came into view. A veteran of the air could not have made a more accurate or an easier landing that did Peggy. The big machine glided to the ground as softly as a feather, just at the edge of the patch of shade and verdure which made up Steer Wells.
That afternoon, after the midday meal, a cloud of dust to the southward excited everybody's attention. After scanning the oncoming pillar closely Alverado announced that it was caused by a party of horsemen, and it soon became evident that the willow clump was their destination.
"Oh, mercy, I do hope they aren't Indians and we shall all be murdered in our beds!" cried Miss Prescott in considerable alarm. The good lady clasped her hands together distractedly.
"We might be murdered in our hammocks, aunt," observed Peggy, indicating two gaudy specimens of the hanging lounges which had been suspended under the shade; "but only very lazy people could be murdered in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon."
"You know perfectly well what I mean," Miss Prescott began with dignity, when Alverado, who, like the rest, had been watching the advancing cavalcade eagerly, suddenly announced:
"They vaqueros—cowboys!"
"Cowboys!" shrilled Miss Prescott. "That's worse. Oh, dear, I wishI'd never come to the land of the cowboys!"
"You speak as if they were some sort of animal, aunt," laughed Peggy. "I daresay there is no reason to be alarmed at them. I've always heard that they were very courteous and deferential to ladies."
"What would cowboys be doing away out here where there isn't a cow or a calf or even an old mule in sight?" inquired Jess.
"Maybe on wild horse hunt," rejoined Alverado with a shrug.
"Are there wild horses hereabouts then?" asked old Mr. Bell, and then quite absent-mindedly he began murmuring:
"Masseppa, Masseppa tied to a wild horse;In the way of revenge, as a matter of course."
"Plentee wild horse," was the Mexican's rejoinder. "They cross the desert sometimes to get fresh range. Cowboy trail them and cut them off and lasso them. Then they break them to ride."
"Oh, what a shame!" cried Peggy, impulsively.
"No shame go-od," declared the Mexican stolidly; "bye an' bye wild horse all gone. Good."
"I think it's hateful," declared Jess; "just the same I should like to see a wild horse hunt," she added with girlish inconsistence.
"So should I if they'd let them all go again," agreed Peggy.
Old Mr. Bell laughed, for which he was gently reproved by MissPrescott.
"I shall bring this matter to the attention of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals back home," she said somewhat snappishly.
But there was no opportunity to exchange more remarks on the subject.
Uttering a shrill series of "ye-o-o-ows" the riders bore down on the little desert camp. From the heaving sides of the ponies, plastered with the gray alkali of the desert, clouds of steam were rising. Their riders, with mouths screened from the biting dust with red handkerchiefs, were seemingly engaged in a race for the willow clump where water and shade awaited them.
"Yip-yip-y-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
The sound came raucously from behind a dozen bandaged mouths as the band swept down oil tile camp. And then suddenly:
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A volley of revolver shots resounded as the jubilant horse hunters— as Alverado had shrewdly suspected they were—dashed forward.
"Oh, Land of Goshen!" screamed Miss Prescott, as, with her fingers in her ears, she fled into her tent and pulled the flap to. Peggy and Jess stood their ground boldly enough, although Jess's face turned rather pale and her breath heaved in perturbation.
"Keep still, honey, they won't hurt you," comforted Peggy amid the uproar.
Suddenly the leader of the horsemen drew his pony up abruptly, throwing the cat-like little beast almost back upon his haunches.
"Boys! Ladies!" he shouted.
Instantly every sombrero came off and was swept round each rider's head in a broad circle. It was a pretty bit of homage and the girls bowed in acknowledgment of it.
"Hooray!" yelled the horsemen as they flung themselves from their steaming but still active little mounts.
"They're not so bad after all," breathed Jess, still, however,clinging to Peggy's shirt-waisted arm.
But the leader, hat in hand, was now advancing toward the two girls. The others hung back looking rather sheepish. They were not in the habit of meeting ladies, and to encounter two young and pretty girls in the midst of the alkali was evidently a shock to them. The leader was a stalwart figure of a man, who might have stepped from the advertising matter of a Wild West show. Leather chaparejos encased his long legs. Round his throat was loosely knotted the red handkerchief which they all wore when riding to protect their mouths and nostrils from the dust. His shirt was once blue, but it was so covered with the gray of the alkali that it was difficult to tell what color it might have been originally. For the rest he wore a big sombrero, the leather band of which was spangled with stars worked in silver wire, and a pair of workmanlike-looking gauntlets covered his hands.
"Beg pardon, ladies, for makin' sich a rough house," he said hesitating, "but, yer see, ther boys wall we didn't hardly expec' ter fin' ladies present."
"I'm sure we enjoyed it very much," rejoined Peggy quite at ease and her own cool self now "It was like—er—like Buffalo Bill—"
"Only more so," put in Jess, with her most bewitching smile.
"Um—er—quite so," rejoined the plainsman, rather more at ease now; "ye see, we're a party that's out on a horse hunt. We got on ther tracks of the band ther other side of ther San Quentin range, and figgering thet they'd cut across here ter git to ther feeding grounds on ther Pablo range on t'other side of ther desert we stopped in here fer water an' shade."
"My name's Bud Reynolds," he volunteered tentatively.
Peggy took the hint conveyed.
"And we are part of a scientific exploring party," she said.
"College gals, by gee!" breathed Bud in what he thought was an inaudible aside.
"The party is in charge of Mr. James Bell. This is his brother, Mr.Peter Bell—"
"Glad ter meet yer, I'm sure," said Bud with a low bow as the poet hermit stepped forward.
"I am Miss Margaret Prescott; this is my chum, Miss Bancroft, and there is my aunt, Miss Sally Prescott—"
Peggy, with a perfectly grave face, indicated Miss Prescott's tent, from between the flaps of which that New England lady's spectacled countenance was peering.
"Come out, auntie," she added.
"Oh, Peggy, is it perfectly safe?" queried Miss Prescott anxiously.
"Safe, mum!" exclaimed Bud expansively. "If it was any safer you'd hav ter send fer ther perlice. Jes becos we're rough and ain't got on full evenin' dress you musn't think we're dangerous, mum," he went on more gravely. "I'll warrant you'll fin' better fellers right here on ther alkali than on Fit' Avenoo back in New York."
"Oh, do you come from New York," cried the romantic Jess, scenting what she would have called "a dear of a story."
"A long time ago I did," rejoined Bud slowly. "But come on, boys," he resumed with a return to his old careless manner, "come up an' be interduced."
The others, hats in hand, shuffled forward. It was plainly a novel experience for them.
"And now," said Peggy cheerfully, when the ceremony had been concluded, "you all look dreadfully tired and hot. The water hole's right over there. When you've got off some of that dust we shall have something for you to eat and some coffee."
This announcement took the horse hunters by storm. With yips and whoops they dashed off to the water hole, while Miss Sally and old Peter Bell began to prepare a hasty meal for the unexpected visitors.
It was an hour or more later when, having inspected the aeroplane and marveled much thereat, the horse hunters arose to take their leave. They would have to press on, they explained, to reach the rendezvous of the wild horses in the San Pablo range. These hills lay far to the northeast. Bud perspiringly made the farewell speech.
"Thankin' you one and all," he began, with perhaps a vague recollection of the last circus he had seen, and there he stopped short.
"Anyhow we thanks you," he said, getting a fresh start and jerking the words out as if they had been shots from a revolver. "It ain't every day we has a pleasure like this here hes bin—"
"Hooray!" yelled the other horse hunters, who, already mounted, stood behind their leader at the edge of the willows.
"An'—an'—wall, ther desert hes dangers uv its own an' if at any time Bud Reynolds er ther boys kin help yer out send fer them to ther San Pablo Range and if we're thar we'll be with yer ter ther last bank uv ther last ditch."
With a sigh of relief Bud flung himself upon his pony and drove the spurs home. Amidst a tornado of yells and shouts the rest, waving their sombreros wildly, dashed off after him. In a few moments they were only a cloud of dust on the alkali.
"I declare I feel kind of sad now they're gone," said Miss Sally after an interval of silence.
"Rough diamonds," opined old Mr. Bell guardedly.
"But they've got warm, big hearts," stoutly declared Peggy. "I wish—"
She stopped abruptly.
"Wish what, Peggy dear?" asked Jess, noting the troubled look that had crept over her chum's face.
"Oh, nothing at all," rejoined Peggy. But she was not speaking the whole truth, for the girl had been thinking what a bulwark of strength Bud and his followers would have been against the vague menace of Red Bill.
It was late that night—after midnight as well as Peggy could judge—that she was awakened by Jess bending over her cot in the tent that both girls shared.
"O-h-h! Peggy, Peggy! I'm frightened!" wailed the girl aviator's chum.
"Frightened? Of what dear?" asked Peggy wide awake in an instant.
"I—I don't just know," quavered Jess, "but, Oh, Peggy, you'll think I'm an awful 'fraid cat, but I'm absolutely certain I heard footsteps, stealthy footsteps outside just now."
"Nonsense, girlie. It must have been a nightmare," rejoined Peggy with sharp assurance.
"I might have thought so," went on Jess, "but I looked out through the flap of the tent to make sure and I'm certain as that I'm standing here now that I saw some figures on horseback over by the water hole."
"Perhaps another party of horse hunters," suggested Peggy soothingly.
"But, Peggy dear, they made hardly any noise. That is, the horses I mean. I heard men's footsteps, but after a minute they mounted and rode off, and—oh, it was too ghostly for anything—they made no noise at all."
"You mean you couldn't hear any sound of the ponies' hoofs?" askedPeggy incredulously.
"No, they moved in absolute silence. Peggy, you don't think it was anything supernatural, do you?"
For answer Peggy drew her revolver from under her pillow and tiptoed to the tent flap. It faced the water hole and in the bright white moonlight a clear view of it could be obtained. But after a prolonged scrutiny Jess's plucky chum was unable to make out any objects other than the usual ones appertaining to the camp.
"Imagination, my dear," she said, with positiveness. But Jess still shuddered and seemed under the influence of some strange fear.
"It was not imagination, Peggy. It wasn't it really wasn't."
"Well, we'll look in the morning and if we find tracks we shall know that you are right, and we'll get the boys back for a while anyhow," reassured Peggy.
But in the morning it was Alverado who came to the tent and in an excited voice asked to see "missee" at once.
Peggy hastily completed dressing and emerged, leaving Jess still asleep. Something warned her that it would be best not to arouse her chum just then.
"What is it, Alverado?" she asked, as the Mexican, betraying every mark of agitation, hastened to her side.
"Santa Maria, missee," breathed the Mexican, "water almost all gone!"
"The water is almost all gone?" quavered Peggy, beginning to sense what was coming.
"Yes, missee. Me go there this morning and—Madre de Dios—the water hole almost empty."
"Were there any tracks?" inquired Peggy anxiously.
"Plenty tracks, but the man's had the cavallos' feet bundled in sacks so make no noise—leave no tracks."
"Let me have a look."
With Alverado at her side Peggy hastened toward the water hole. She could hardly repress an exclamation of alarm as she gazed at the hole. Bare six inches of muddy water was on the bottom, where the day before there had been a foot or more. All about were vague blotty-looking tracks which showed plainly enough the manner in which the marauders had concealed all noise of their movements. The muffled hoofs would naturally give forth no sound.
"So Jess was right after all," breathed Peggy softly; "but who could have done such a thing? And why?"
But the latter question had not framed itself in her mind before it was answered. Without water they would not be able to exist at Steer Wells for twenty-four hours. A retreat would be equally impracticable. It was all horribly clear. The theft of the water was the first step in a deliberate plan to drive them out. The motive, too, was plain enough in the light of the overheard conversation at the National Hotel. The men who wanted Mr. Bell's mine had waited till he had located it before striking their first blow. What would their next be? Peggy's pulses throbbed and the grove seemed to blur for an instant. But the next moment she was mistress of herself again. Clearly there was only one thing to do. Lay the whole matter before Mr. Bell.
"Alverado," said Peggy quietly, "after breakfast I am going to the range over yonder. You must guard the camp."
"Yes, missee," replied the Mexican; "I take care of him with—with my life."'
"I am sure you will," said Peggy in her most matter-of-fact tones, "and in the mean time say nothing to anyone else about what you have found. Bring up the water for breakfast yourself and don't let Mr. Bell come near the water hole if you can help it."
"It shall be as the senorita wishes," rejoined Alverado in low tones; but there was a ring in his voice that told Peggy that she could trust the brown-skinned "Mestizo" to the utmost.
Somewhat more than two hours later Peggy brought her aeroplane to the ground in the arroyo which had been the scene of the battle with the coyotes. The girl could not help giving an involuntary shudder as she thought of the narrow escape they had had on that occasion. But in the light of the other and more serious menace which now hung over them like a storm cloud, the adventure with the wild beasts faded into insignificance. Human enemies, more deadly perhaps than any of the animal kingdom, threatened, and if signs counted for anything it would be no long time before they would strike.
Peggy had not been able to leave the camp without some resort to strategy. Naturally Jess had been anxious to come. But a quick flight had been imperative, and the presence of even one other person in the monoplane detracted somewhat from its speed. Then, too, Peggy had ached with her whole being to be alone—to think. She wanted to reconstruct everything in her mind so that when she told all to Mr. Bell there would be no confusion, no hesitancy in her story.
Three sharp toots on the electric signaling horn the aeroplane carried—connected to a set of dry cells—resulted in an outpouring from the mine-hole of the three prospectors. Very business-like they looked, too, in khaki trousers, dust covered shirts and rolled up sleeves.
"Well, well! Early visitors," exclaimed Mr. Bell jocularly, and then struck by Peggy's sober expression as she stepped from the car of the aeroplane he stopped short.
"My dear child, what is it?" he demanded. "Where are the twin fairies of light that used to dance in your eyes?"
"My goodness, Mr. Bell, you ought to have been a poet like your brother," laughed Roy coming forward with Jimsy to meet his sister.
And then, like his senior, he, too, was struck by Peggy's anxious look.
"What's the trouble, sis; bad news?" he asked.
"Anything happened?" demanded Jimsy.
"Oh, no, no; set your minds at rest on that," responded Peggy."Everything is all right, at least—at least—"
Her voice wavered a bit and Mr. Bell gently led her to a stool in front of the rough camp they had set up in the arroyo.
"Now then, my dear," he said, "what is it?"
Peggy faced her eager listeners, and, recovering from her momentary tremor, told her story from beginning to end in a clear, convincing way.
"Do you think I did right in coming?" she concluded. Her gaze fell appealingly upon Mr. Bell. She did not wish this sinewy, wiry, self-reliant man to think that she was a victim of a school girl's hysterical fears. But the mining man's words speedily set her at ease on this point.
"Think you did right!" he echoed, while a rather serious expression came over his face; "my dear girl, if you had not come to me I should have thought you did very wrong. You have made only one mistake and that was in not telling me before this time about what you overheard at the National House. This Red Bill, as they call him, is one of the most unscrupulous ruffians that cumber the face of the Nevada desert. In any other community he would have been brought up with a round turn long ago. But here," he shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose after all," he went on, "it's the old story of who'll bell the cat."
"Do you think that we are in serious danger?" inquired Jimsy. His eyes were round as saucers and his usually good natured face look troubled.
"Well, not in serious danger, my boy," rejoined Mr. Bell; "but, just between us four, mind, it behooves us to use all speed in getting the title of this mine recorded. This Red Bill is as resourceful as a fox, and what Miss Peggy has told us shows that he is closer on our trail than I should have imagined possible. The draining of the water hole is unfortunate in two ways. If, as I now suspect, he is camped in the hills to the east of the camp, it is plain that he has secured a supply of water sufficient to last him for some time. And this cuts both ways, for his gain in that respect means our loss. The more water he has the less we have. That much is clear."
"Clear as mud," said Jimsy ruefully; but his tone robbed the words of any humorous significance.
"You have reached a decision, Mr. Bell?" asked Roy. The boy had not spoken yet.
Mr. Bell's mouth closed in a firm line and his chin came out in whatPeggy described to herself as "a fighting bulge."
"Yes," he said with characteristic vim, "I have. Steer Wells will not be safe after daylight to-day for the women of the party. Red Bill is dastard enough, through an attack on them, to try to intimidate me. We must shift to try to camp at once."
"But where?"
The question came blankly from Jimsy.
"Here. We have a moderate supply of water and there is feed of a kind. Enough at least to keep the stock alive till our work is completed. You see," he continued, turning to Peggy, "the boys and I have struck a very interesting lead. How far it goes I have no idea, but my mining experience teaches me that it is an offshoot of the mother lode. Until we have tapped that I don't want to file a claim."
Peggy nodded her head sagely.
"I see," she said, "you don't want to file your claim and then have somebody else squat down beside you and win the biggest prize of all."
"That's it exactly," said Mr. Bell, "but the question in my mind is whether I am right in exposing you, Miss Bancroft and Miss Prescott to what may be peril. And yet—"
He broke off and a troubled expression crept over his weather-beaten face.
"And yet," Peggy finished for him, "there's no way for us to go back now without abandoning the mine."
"That's it. But if you—"
"I vote to stick by the mine."
There was no hesitation in Peggy's voice now.
Mr. Bell's keen gray eyes kindled.
"You're a girl of real grit," he said, "but the others?"
"I'll answer for them. Miss Prescott need not know anything of the danger. After all, it may amount to nothing. As for Jess, she has as much, and more, nerve than I have."
"When it comes to eating ice cream," put in Jimsy irrelevantly.
Peggy, glancing about her, could not but reflect at the moment what a strange contrast the scene about them offered to the peaceful landscape and commonplace adventures of hum-drum Long Island. Not but what the Girl Aviators had had their meed of excitement there, too, as readers of the "Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship" well know. But in the scoriated hills with their scanty outcropping of pallid wild oats, the fire-seered acclivities and the burning blue of the desert heavens above all, she beheld a setting entirely foreign to anything in her experience.
"It's like Remington's pictures," she thought to herself as she gazed at the roughly clad group about her, the shabby tent, the mining implements cast about carelessly here and there and the smoldering fire with the blackened cooking pots beside it.
Only one sharply modern note intruded-the two big, yellow-winged monoplanes. Even they appeared, in this wild, outre setting, to have taken on the likenesses of giant scarabs, monsters indigenous to the baked earth and starving vegetation. She was roused from her reverie by Mr. Bell's voice cutting incisively the half unconscious silence into which they had lapsed.
"Roy, you and your sister will take the monoplane in which Miss Peggy rode over and bring Miss Prescott, Miss Bancroft and my brother over at once."
"But the stock and Alverado?"
The question came from Peggy.
"Alverado, as you call him, can drive the stock across the desert. It should not take him more than twenty-four hours if he presses right ahead. We can send out an aeroplane scouting party for him if he appears to be unduly delayed."
After some more discussion along the same lines Roy, nothing loth for an aerial dash after his hard work in the mine hole, made ready for the trip. From a locker he drew out his solar helmet and goggles and advised Peggy to don her sun spectacles also. But Peggy, as on several previous occasions, declined positively to put on the smoked glasses designed to protect the eyes from the merciless glare of the desert at noon day.
"They'd make me look like a feminine Sherlock Holmes," she declared stoutly.
"I hope that you won't take it amiss if I say that you have already proved yourself one, and a good one, too," laughed Mr. Bell as the brother and sister clambered into the chassis.
But as Roy adjusted his levers for the rise from the depths of the sun-baked arroyo Mr. Bell held up his hand.
"One moment," he said, "bring back some of the dynamite with you. We're almost out of it and it's needed badly. We've got to blast through that streak of hard pan."
"We'll bring it," nodded Roy, "although I'm not going to tell Aunt Sally about it. I guess she wouldn't be best pleased at the idea of traveling in company with such a dangerous cargo."
As he spoke the propeller began to whir, and after a brief run, the monoplane took the air, rising in a graceful angle toward the burning blue. As they rose above the hills a reddish haze that overspread the horizon became distinctly visible. Peggy viewed it with a little apprehension.
"I hope that doesn't portend another electrical storm," she said rather anxiously, leaning forward and addressing her brother.
Roy shook his head.
"Guess it's just heat haze," he decided. "Mr. Bell says that those dry storms don't often come twice in one season."
"Well, let's be thankful for small mercies anyhow," said Peggy with a return to her former cheerfulness.
The news that camp was to be broken at once and the base of operations removed to the hills, came as a shock to those left behind in the camp. Somehow the pleasant shelter of the ragged willows had become a sort of makeshift home to them, and the idea of winging to the barren hills was not pleasing. Miss Prescott, however, was the only one who made an open wail about it. Old Mr. Bell took it as stoically as he did most things. Only, as he hastened about the camp making preparations for the departure, he could have been heard humming:
"We've got to go far, far away,To the mountains, so they say;I hate to leave the willows' shade,But Brother James must be obeyed."
Alverado received his instructions with a silent shrug. He informed Roy and Peggy that there was just enough water left to fill the bags for the dash across the desert. He said no more, but there was a curious kind of reticence in his manner, as if he was holding back something he did not wish to express outwardly. It was not till everything was packed ready for the start, and old Mr. Bell and Miss Sally had been hoisted and dragged into the chassis, that he drew Roy apart and spoke. Peggy was included in the confidence.
"While you gone I follow up tracks from the water hole," he said; "bime-by I come to place where sacks slip off one pony's feet. Then I see a track that I make stick in my memory long, long ago. That day they leave me for dead on the desert."
He stooped and drew the outline of a peculiarly shaped hoof on theAlkali-impregnated dust. The boy and girl watched him curiously.
"Well?" asked Peggy, and she and her brother hung on the answer.
Alverado's face became overcast by a black look. His eyes glowed like two live coals.
"I think then I never forget that track. I think the same to-day.The pony that made that track was ridden by Red Bill."